Veggie Guy: NAAN

Ok--I'll admit it. The Shops at Legacy are pretty cool. Now if only they weren't all the way up in freakin' Oklahoma...erm...I mean Plano.

I met up with my vegan buddy Drew at Legacy NAAN last week, where he'd set up a multiple-course vegan food tasting. It's located in the "old side [of the shops]," as one cougar standing outside of Fox Sports Grill put it.

Yeah, Drew loves his suburban life. And he thinks it's crazy that I choose to live in a city full of urban shit-kickers who get their panties in a wad when vegans talk about the douchebaggery of the Texas State Fair.

Ahem...moving on.

We started our vegan tasting with the vegetarian Bi Bim Bop, a cold salad of fermented Korean vegetables on a bed of lettuce and served with a bowl of sticky rice, and the vegetarian Dol Sot Bi Bim Bop (a similar dish served in a hot stone pot over the sticky rice). Both dishes were pretty interesting, but I enjoyed the Dol Sot for its fun cook-it-yourself factor. We also tried the Tofu and Mushroom Bi Bim Bop (served hot) without oyster sauce.

The sushi menu didn't list any vegetarian items, so the sushi chef prepared us two off-menu rolls. One was a beautifully crafted cucumber roll loaded with avocado, soy paper, seaweed salad, lettuce, pickled daikon, and topped with spicy ponzu sauce and mango puree.

Our second roll was nothing short of brilliant! It was a savory-sweet and spicy roll filled with cucumber, avocado, yamagobo, pickled daikon, tempura asparagus, tempura onions, and sweet potato. This roll was wrapped in soy paper and thinly-sliced avocado, then laced with a sweet teriyaki sauce and sriracha. The sushi chef named the cucumber roll "Drew's Veggie Roll," and the soy paper & avocado-wrapped roll was titled the "Dallas Vegan Roll." Both rolls are now available on the sushi menu.

As if we hadn't had enough food already, Drew and I tackled a couple of Korean-style pancakes. One was prepped with green onions, bells, and all sorts of other business, and the other was a spicy pancake with young, house-fermented kimchi. We also sampled a kimchi stew with large tofu chunks, and an order of seared tofu cutlets served with pico de gallo (huh?).

OMG--we were stuffed! Still, that didn't stop us from going to town on two bottles of unfiltered sake, several shots of traditional warm sake, and a bottle of plum sake...or as Drew likes to call it, "ladies' sake." I ordered another Dallas Vegan Roll to-go and left the place super full...and a little tipsy. I thanked Drew for setting up such a great dinner, and promised I'd never knock the suburbs again.

But in all honesty, I'd totally go back to Legacy NAAN. It's good as hell! So good, I busted-open my to-go container en route to Dallas and devoured my Dallas Vegan Roll like a starving child in a third-world country...a sight fit for a National Geographic spread, really.